…And if I die before I learn to speak
Can money pay for all the days I lived awake
But half asleep…

from Standing Outside a Broken Phone Booth With Money in My Hand
Primitive Radio Gods

---

Imagine if that’s what hell was: the utter loss of God, and of love and hope, and the sure knowledge that it was you who destroyed whatever good might have been yours. That it all could have been different, if only you had been less selfish or less cowardly, if only you had been a more grateful, more loving human being. To know that it was you all along and no one else, not the people you punished or blamed or pushed away. Total responsibility: yours. All second chances: gone. You’d almost rather spend eternity as a pitchfork target – at least then you could hang on to the meager pleasure of thinking yourself a victim.

---

Instead of seeing your life as a whole, maybe it’s better to break it into episodes. Since you’re not the same person you were ten or fifteen or twenty years ago, you ought to cut yourself some slack. What we think of as mistakes now surely seemed like reasonably good ideas to the people we once were. Some of those mistakes even felt like inevitabilities, didn’t they? Also, it’s a painful fact that many of us can’t fathom the cost of our actions until it’s past time to pay for them. So what are you going to do? Wallow in the past and wish for another try? Daydream about the future when things will finally be the way they’re supposed to be? Or face up to the reality that everything counts, and this moment, the one that’s slipping away half-noticed is the only one that matters. There’s no point chasing the ghosts of our former selves. What could we possibly say that would make any sense? We did what we did, and here we are, powerless to change even one single second. That’s the sting of regret: the knowledge of what needs to be put right, the impossibility to make it so. Kind of like standing outside a broken phone booth with money in your hand.